Claudia Lennear and the two classic songs she inspired
The American soul singer Claudia Lennear was best known as one of the Ikettes in the Ike & Tina Turner Revue through the late 1960s and into the ’70s. She became a salient presence in the music industry as a backing vocalist for the likes of Joe Cocker, Leon Russell, and Freddie King and later led a fruitful solo career.
Lennear’s captivating stage presence and gregarious nature have endeared her to several notable artists, including David Bowie and Mick Jagger. Intriguingly, both musicians wrote a famous song with Lennear in mind: one respectful and the other somewhat problematic.
Firstly, in the early 1970s, during the height of the Rolling Stones’ fame, Mick Jagger wrote ‘Brown Sugar’ for inclusion in the band’s hit 1971 album, Sticky Fingers. Provocative as ever, the Stones conceived the song in reference to the slave trade. The song was allegedly inspired by historical reports of slave owners who raped their captive females after buying them on the market in New Orleans.
The Stones have now retired the song from their live repertoire due to its inspiration and the distasteful energy of the music. To the untrained ear, the song comes off as a jaunt about a white man and a Black female having sex, but the true origin leaves a bitter taste.
According to The Rolling Stones’ founding bassist Bill Wyman, the song was partially inspired by Claudia Lennear, whom Jagger had dated briefly in 1969. Marsha Hunt, also a singer, has also been cited as an inspiration. The pair met on the set of the musical Hair in the early 1970s and entered into a secret relationship until 1972. The couple had one child, Karis Jagger, together.
Two years after ‘Brown Sugar’, David Bowie released his sixth studio album, Aladdin Sane. The Ziggy Stardust follow-up flits through a range of weird, wonderful and often dark glam-rock songs, reflecting on the Starman’s recent move to the US. Following ‘The Jean Genie’ to bookend the album, Bowie bows out to the sound of ‘Lady Grinning Soul’. Driven by Mike Garson’s virtuosic, rippling piano run, the song is a cult favourite, but few fans realise that Bowie wrote the song about Lennear.
During their respective rises to fame at the 1960s and ’70s divide, Bowie and Lennear became well acquainted. Even without its lyrics, ‘Lady Grinning Soul’ evokes an elegant and sexually alluring female. “Mike Garson’s piano opens with the most ridiculous and spot-on re-creation of a 19th Century music hall ‘exotic’ number,” Bowie reflected in a 2008 interview with the Mail on Sunday. “I can see now the ‘poses plastiques’ as if through a smoke-filled bar. Fans, castanets and lots of Spanish black lace and little else. Sexy, mmm? And for you, Madam?”
Noting the song’s unnamed muse, Bowie added that it “was written for a wonderful young girl whom I’ve not seen for more than 30 years. When I hear this song, she’s still in her 20s, of course.”
“A song will put you tantalisingly close to the past, so close that you can almost reach out and touch it,” Bowie pondered. “The sound of ghosts again.”
Listen to The Rolling Stones’ ‘Brown Sugar’ and David Bowie’s ‘Lady Ginning Soul’ below.
